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SCHOOL OF PRACTICAL ASTRONOMY.
Professor Stone.
The courses in this School are arranged primarily for persons proposing
to become practical astronomers. The courses in General Astronomy,
however, are adapted to the wants of those who expect to
teach, as well as of those who desire to pursue the subject as a part of
their general education; while the course in Celestial Mechanics is
recommended to graduate students in Mathematics. The Senior Class
in General Astronomy meets thrice a week, the other classes twice.
The courses pursued are as follows:
I. General Astronomy.—Junior.—The aim of this course is to give
such a knowledge of the facts, principles, and methods of Astronomy
is the same as that recommended for Intermediate Mathematics.
Text-book.—Young's General Astronomy.
Senior.—This course is intended to elucidate selected portions of
the subject more fully and from a more strictly mathematical point of
view than can be done in the Junior course.
Text-books.—Doolittle's Practical Astronomy; Gauss's Theoria Motus (Davis's
translation).
Candidates for the degree of Bachelor of Arts are required to
complete the work of the Junior Class; those for the degree of Master
of Arts must pass examination in both classes.
II. Practical Astronomy, including a systematic training in making
and reducing astronomical observations: theory and use of the
instruments of a fixed observatory; methods of reducing observations;
construction of star catalogues.
Text-books.—Chauvenet's Spherical and Practical Astronomy; various memoirs
and volumes of observations in the Observatory Library.
III. Celestial Mechanics, with practice in numerical computations:
general laws of equilibrium and motion; formation and integration
of the differential equations of motion of a system of bodies
subject to the laws of gravity.
Text-books.—Tisserand's Mécanique Céleste; Dziobek's Mathematischen Theorien
der Planeten-Bewegungen.
A prescribed course in this School, to be agreed upon in a conference
of the Professors interested, will be considered as the equivalent
of the Graduate Course in either Mathematics or Natural Philosophy
for graduates of these schools.
The Astronomical Observatory is situated upon an elevation
known as Mount Jefferson, which furnishes an unobstructed horizon.
The principal building is a rotunda, forty-five feet in diameter, and
contains the great Clark refractor of twenty-six-inches aperture. The
building and instrument are the gift of Leander J. McCormick, Esq.,
of Chicago. The computing rooms are adjoining, and contain clock,
chronograph, etc., and a working library. In a smaller building are a
three-inch Fauth transit and a four-inch Kahler equatorial.
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